Old Missoula

Western Montana – 1860

[Some Basic Western Montana History – Less than 100 white people]

by Paul C. Phillips[1] of the State University History Department

The census of 1860 showed less than 100 white people living in what is now Western Montana, and practically all of these were men. Many of them became men of note. There were still some of the old Hudson’s Bay company traders. Among them was Captain Richard Grant[2] who had just settled on Grant creek some two miles west of the present Missoula. Then there was Neil McArthur who had started Fort Connen [Now known as Fort Connah[3]] and Angus McDonald[4] who had risen high in the company’s employ.

Fort Connen, the only Hudson’s Bay company post in this country, was still enjoying a prosperous trade. Its chief rival was the independent post of Fort Owen in the Bitter Root, first started by Major John Owen[5] in 1850 in the buildings formerly used as St. Mary’s mission. This post had originally been of logs, but Owen surrounded the whole by huge walls of sun-dried bricks and by 1860 the whole establishment was adobe. Owen traded from Fort Benton to the mouth of the Columbia and as far south as Great Salt Lake. He was a short, fat man, and he traveled thousands of miles on horseback and carried many tons of goods over the mountains by means of pack trains. In 1860, however, he was using wagons over the Mullan road between Fort Benton and the Bitter Root. Near Fort Owen were other men who were traders in 1860 but who were later to play a prominent part in building Montana. The best known were Caleb B. Irvine[6], L. R. Maillet[7] and Thomas Harris[8].

In 1860 Major Owen was appointed Indian agent for the Flathead, Kalispell and Kootenai Indians. He built a new agency on the Jocko not far from the present Arlee. Here he started a model farm for the Indian, built a sawmill and a grist mill, and as soon as the lumber was sawed built houses and barns. This work and the construction of the Mullan road[9] brought into the country many laborers, and gave an impetus to the starting of new trading posts.

The most interesting of these new posts was located at Hell Gate, about six miles west of the present Missoula. In the spring of 1860 Frank L. Worden[10] of Walla Walla and C. P. Higgins[11], who had come out with Governor Stevens and had been an assistant of Mullan in building the Mullan road, started out to open a trade at the new Indian agency. When they came to Hell Gate they decided that it was a good location not only for trade with the Indians but also with whites, and there they decided to build a post. Frank Woody[12], who had come to Montana four years before, became their chief clerk. These three men also were to do much in building Montana. There were others in Montana who had come to trade. Some of these were “mountain men” who had long been in the country, and there were those who traded with emigrants going west on the trails southward to search for gold.

There was one mission in this country, located at St. Ignatius. It had been established in this new site by Father Hoecken[13] in 1854 and had begun a vast work among the Indians of the Flathead country.

By 1860 all these settlements were connected by the Mullan road with the outside world. To the east this road led to Fort Benton, where steamboats came from St. Louis. To the west it led to Walla Walla and the steamboats of the Pacific. The country that was soon to become Montana was waking to a new life.

The above article appeared in The Daily Missoulian on March 25, 1929.

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